Home before Midnight
by Schizoid Sprite
Summary: Quatre is fifteen when he first met sixteen-year-old Dorothy, and she is nine when she met a twenty-year-old Quatre. This is what's normal for them: getting to know each other one day at a time, though not necessarily in chronological order.
1. Convergence

**Disclaimer:** Gundam Wing and all its characters © Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, and TV Asahi. All fics are not for profit.

**A/N:** Welcome to another 4xD series! This fic is inspired by Audrey Niffeneger's book, _The Time Traveler's Wife_. I have written a one-shot based on it a while ago, though it's darker and is not focusing in romance (see _Wake Me Up When September Ends_ on my storylist). Yep, this will be a romance fic. Some canon elements will come to play here, but over all it's kind of AU-ish.

To those who are following Scissored Kismets, I promise to come back to it later. :) Plot bunnies won't let me continue it until I put this one on paper.

* * *

**Home Before Midnight**

by Schizoid Sprite

Chapter 1: Convergence

* * *

"Time is a figure eight, at its center the city of Deja Vu."-_Robert Brault_

* * *

**November 10 195. Quatre is 15, Dorothy is 16.**

It was brutally beautiful. All his life he wondered how it could show him there was splendor even in the highest peak of negative emotions. He wondered why, in the heartache that seemed to fuel his hands to move right now, he could produce notes that could show the ugly bleeding of his insides with vindictive magnificence.

_Perhaps,_ he thought, _the magic of music is something that I would never learn the trick of._

He was so wrapped in his thoughts he didn't notice at first the sound of clapping from the doorway._1_

"Impressive," a voice announced that made him strike a sour note. He quickly recovered and saved the rest of the piece, flashing a slow smile at his unexpected listener. He remembered her: the girl whom Relena asked him to sit next to in his first class, and the only student who dared challenged Heero to a fencing match. She leaned against the double doors, arms crossed against her chest, waiting for him to finish.

"Very graceful," she remarked after the last note faded, her claps languid. She picked up her brown leather briefcase— identical to everyone else's, the Institute strict when it comes to uniformity—and walked towards him.

"Thank you," he answered politely as she settled her briefcase on the floor next to his own. She stood two feet away from him, her hands clasped behind her back.

"An original composition?"

He gave a curt nod. "I wrote it for my mother."

What made him disclose such a personal matter, he did not know. He never told anyone about it. Not even Sandrock.

Or ZERO.

The girl slipped to the bench next to him, letting her fingertips touch the ivory keys without exerting too much pressure, humming under her breath. He recognized the tune. It was the piece he had just played, and he furrowed his brow, a tad amazed and a tad suspicious. That melody…he played it even before she arrived, after Noin left the room. The riff was too complicated to be memorized that easily, and he played it just once…

"Music relaxes you," she said thoughtfully, cutting his thoughts off.

_Oh,_ he thought. So she's been eavesdropping? Those were the exact words he told Noin.

"Yes," he replied calmly, shifting ever so slightly so her hair would not brush against his arm. "It pacifies my inner turmoil."

"Does it really?"

He raised a brow. So did she.

"I don't think so. Your music's just making you a lot guiltier about what you did, weaving your inner battles together to form a big, intricate war. I don't call that 'peace' at all."

He flinched at the truth of her every word, but zeroed in on a phrase. "About what I did?" Wing Zero? The people he killed? The colony he annihilated? Trowa?

"About what you did," she confirmed, transforming every question mark of his little questions into accusing exclamation points. He swallowed the bile that gathered at the back of his mouth, and he did not know why he suddenly felt as though he was caught in a cobweb trap. After hearing her fairytale of "two men with the same name", he became aware that she was someone they have to be careful when around. She would _know _him, especially after…_what he did_. Information about the Colony 06E3 massacre_2_ would not be classified to the Romafeller.

"The piece is magnificent, but too melancholy to be considered something inspired by your mother."

"Not every childhood is happy," he said bitterly. Another personal tidbit out.

"I agree," she replied, amusement in her voice. "I'm even uncertain if I should label that stage of my life as 'childhood', because no matter what angle you look at it from, it really wasn't." She pursed her lips—a seductive but nefarious-looking rosebud that mysteriously swaddled his arms with gooseflesh. "Experience is the harshest teacher, isn't it? Sometimes it gives us the same lessons, like what it did in the earlier years of our lives. The only difference is what we do when we're finally handed the exam papers."

_And I flunked the test,_ he admitted to himself. He had the feeling that if he let this go on, he could say something ungentlemanly. More than once in the past he was able to prove that pain could make him aggressive. "I'm sorry Miss Catalonia, but I'm not really interested in any philosophical discussions right now."

"This isn't a philosophical discussion, Quatre Raberba Winner." She got up, tossing her hair. "It's merely a prologue to the next item in your self-organized syllabus. You're about to explore it now, and I wish you the best of luck."

What was she talking about?

"You'll know soon enough," she hissed with a devilish grin, as if she heard his thoughts. She stooped to pick up her briefcase. Midway down she stopped, surprising him with a quick peck on the lips. She giggled when he started, and before she made her graceful exit, slipped a folded paper in his hand.

Quatre felt the heat scattering beneath the skin of his face and neck. He unfolded the paper, revealing numbers—not her phone number though, killing half his assumptions.

"September 17, 186," he mouthed the first line. It was a list of dates.

* * *

**September 17, 186. Quatre is 15, and 6, Dorothy is 7.**

The continuum of vivid colors from a sudden flash of light forced him to crush his eyes close as hard as he could. The swirling afterimage bled through his eyelids; the sharp assault of vertigo was expected. He clutched at his stomach in vain attempts to still his churning lunch, gnashing his teeth so he could trap the scream he wanted so badly to release. Pain, numbness, then pain again—the alternating sensations were beyond tolerance.

All of this perished as fast as they flashed, and when Quatre opened his eyes he was not in that classroom anymore. The first thing that grabbed his attention was the ice carving of a naked cherub towering over him, drizzling him with miniature rainbows as the chandelier lights refracted against its curves. A cornucopia of food spread at the foot of the figure—bruschetta, gravlax, caviar… dishes reminiscent of the humdrum portions of his childhood spent in social and benefit functions. He looked around. The orchestra was playing now, some couples waltzing on the dance floor.

He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. _Where am I? Am I dreaming?_

"Are you a clone, too?"

Quatre snapped his head towards the voice. A blonde boy in white tuxedo was standing a few feet away from him, but the question was certainly not for him. The kid was facing another blonde, a taller girl with golden plaits on either side of her head and an adorable but angry pout. A strong hunch that listening would help him figure out where he was or how he got there hit him. Trusting this, Quatre rounded the table and pretended to help himself to a barquette.

"I'm not," the girl scoffed, her little nostrils flaring. "Why do you ask?"

"You're blonde."

"So are you! Well, are you a clone?"

There was an awkward pause. "I don't know. Maybe we're relatives of clones. You're not one of my sisters, then?"

The girl tilted her head. "Definitely not. I'm an only child."

"Oh," the boy mimicked her tone. "I'm the only son in my family, but I'm not unique at all. I'm a copy."

"Copy?"

"Copy of…a copy. There are twenty-nine people whom I was copied from, and they are copies of each other too. I don't know." The boy shrugged and extended his hand. "My name is Quatre Raberba Winner."

Quatre choked. The girl chuckled, probably at how the boy pronounced the r's in his name with difficulty. She accepted his hand. "I'm Dorothy Catalonia. Pleased to meet you."

"Right, I'm just dreaming," Quatre decided, though he was still gaping incredulously at the scene. What else could this be? After he was exposed to ZERO, his subconscious became very active and sensitive, inserting unneeded episodes in his mind—usually from the past—that would give him a message, like a daily horoscope. This was something different; there was an enigmatic pain as a preamble and everything was palpable. No way could this be a flashback, for he could not recall meeting _her_ before he enrolled in the Sanc Kingdom Institute. The only Dorothy he knew when he was small was the character in an pre-colonial Earthling story.

"The only Dorothy I know is the character from the Wonderful Wizard of Oz," the kid mused, sending Quatre choking again. "Are you and that Dorothy the same person?"

"No, that is Dorothy Gale," Dorothy replied, stifling a yawn. "She's not real."

"But Oz exists," the boy whispered. "I heard my father talking about Oz, and he says there are many bad guys in Oz. And then you are Dorothy."

"That's a different Oz and I'm a different Dorothy."

"Oh. Okay." The boy chewed on his lip, and then grabbed Dorothy's hand. "Come on, I'll show you something."

"Wha—"

The kids broke into a run, zigzagging in the moving maze of people. Quatre left the table and followed them, ignoring the stares that his crumpled Sanc school uniform magnetized—again, something different from his previous 'flashbacks' wherein he was normally invisible.

"Where are we going?" Quatre heard Dorothy asked, hiking her dress up to her ankles after nearly tripping twice.

"To Pietro."

"Pietro?"

"He's my new violin."

"Quatre!"

As if the knob he was already twisting became red-hot, the boy quickly dropped his hands from it. Quatre stopped in his tracks and stared at the tall strawberry blonde approaching the kids. She was a sister, one of the oldest perhaps. He could not remember her name.

"Where do you think are you going?"

Little Quatre threw Dorothy a furtive glance. "I'm just going to introduce her to Pietro. She'd love to hear him."

"We're in a party, remember?" The woman's eyes fell on the kids' clasped hands. "Father requires you to be here until it ends. And little missy, why don't you go to your mommy? She might be looking for you now."

"I'm not with my mother," the girl snapped. She pulled her hand out of Quatre's and curtsied. "Excuse me, ma'am."

"But Dorothy—"

"I'll see you in the land of Oz, Quatre," she said in a mock-chipper tone. "Bye."

Dorothy swayed her way away from the Winners, slipping out of sight where some businesswomen shared perfumed hugs and juicy gossips. The little boy looked as though he was smothering his sobs, and he obediently tailed his sister as she walked back to the long table. Quatre watched them quietly.

Suddenly remembering the list of dates, Quatre scanned the room for the little girl. _I hope she knows something about this..._

* * *

She was again wearing that pout when he saw her on the balcony, staring up at the colony's "sky". She really was Dorothy—the way she stands, the expressions of her face...he had seen them on the older Dorothy in his 'reality' (if this was a dream after all). He thought he had seen a hint of magenta on her cheeks after her fencing match with Heero, but he could appreciate the blush on this little girl more because it was more pronounced and glowing. Her hair was shorter in those braids, and her yellow balloon dress loomed larger and heavier for her to don. She appeared comfortable in it, though.

He rolled his eyes when he instinctively arranged his collar before walking up to her. _Force of habit_, he dismissed.

"Good evening, young lady. Is something bothering you?"

Dorothy slowly turned her head. "Good evening sir. No, nothing's bothering me." She studied him for a while and shrugged. "Except that there are no stars here and the moon looks like a chunk of rock and there is a machine for the weather and the people here are different."

"Well, you're in a colony."

"That's exactly it, mister. On Earth, the crickets will be singing their lovely _cruuuueeeee-cruuuuueee_ during this time of the day, and I will be able to smell the night and the flowers that the real air brings, then Papa will hand me the storybooks that I love and in the storybooks there are mountains and fields and the sky with stars. And…"

Quatre stared down at her. "And?"

"Papa told me not to talk to strangers."

He laughed, then offered her his hand. "Yes, that's true. I don't think I'm a stranger to you though. I'm Quatre Raberba Winner."

An eyebrow twitched. "Quatre Raberba Winner? Wait, a boy right there also—"

"Please, Dorothy," he got down on his knees so he could eye her levelly. "I think I need your help."

He would have taken some time to marvel at the adorableness of her confused and frightened countenance, but he wanted no time wasted. He pulled out the folded paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

"September 17, 186," she read. "That's today. And it's my birthday."

* * *

TBC.

Notes:

1. The first part takes place in _Episode 33: The Lonely Battlefield._

2. The colony that Quatre blew up in _Episode 24: The Gundam They Called Zero_, is Colony 06E3. Though the civilians had been evacuated, a military presence remained in place to defend it.

This will clock up perhaps six to eight chapters, the 'present' timeline running from Episode 33 to Endless Waltz and the 'past' timeline exploring the childhood of both our main characters. Again, this is going to be a romance fic, so no matter how much I want to stick to canon, I will be needing AU elements to make this work out. Comments and concrits are greatly appreciated!


	2. Mobius Strip

**Disclaimer: **Gundam Wing and all its characters © Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, and TV Asahi; The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003 by MacAdam/Cage, is authored by Audrey Niffenegger. All fics are not for profit.

Some lines from _The Time Traveler's Wife_'s chapter one: _The First Date, One_, are incorporated in this chapter.

* * *

**Home Before Midnight**

by Schizoid Sprite

Chapter 2: Mobius Strip

* * *

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."- Albert Einstein

* * *

**November 10, 195. Quatre is 15, Dorothy is 16.**

The last concrete image he saw was Dorothy's baffled face, and the last clear sound bites he heard were of his own voice: "Oh, really? Happy birthday, then." Soon after the insincere greeting left his mouth, everything around him undulated again into a patchwork of wriggling colors. The sound of rushing blood surged in his ears, followed by a scratching noise reminiscent of fingernails against glass. He felt a hardness materializing beneath him, and when he opened his eyes, he was back in the Sanc Institute, slumped against the piano.

"It _was _a dream," he concluded, rubbing at the imprints of piano keys on his cheek. He unclenched his fist and stared warily at the crumpled paper there, as if expecting it would transfigure into some kind of nightmare creature. _It felt so real,_ he thought. Heaving a sigh, he picked up his briefcase and headed out of the classroom. _Perhaps talking to Heero might help me resurface to reality fully._

But reality wasn't always something he looked forward to.

Heero was in their dorm room, slouched on the upper bunk of their double-deck bed. He didn't make a response or any form of acknowledgment when Quatre greeted him, and for some reason, Quatre was glad. Heero's mouth has become his personal Pandora's box; he sought advice from the Japanese before and was awarded with swarms of painful truths that were too extreme for him to endure. That was why he refrained from mentioning Trowa or the ZERO. He knew he deserved castigation—he was more than willing to die if it was the only thing that could rectify his mistakes—but there were certain things he should accomplish first before 'resting' time. Maybe after protecting Princess Relena and this nation, maybe after assuring that his family's Corporation would be bequeathed to trustworthy hands…

"You're self-flagellating again."

Quatre blinked out of his reverie. "What?"

Heero went back to typing. "If there is any way you could atone for your sins, being guilty about not being guilty enough doesn't count into the tally."

Why wouldn't Heero just stick to his socially maladroit self and _shut up_? Admitting that Heero knew how to read him stung. Sometimes he thinks the Japanese could even hear and understand his Space Heart's unintelligible whispers, and it was downright unfair. Sighing, Quatre slumped to the lower bunk and dropped his briefcase to the floor, sending its latch to come off and the contents to sprawl out. Groaning, Quatre bent over to start picking up the mess—and halted in mid-movement.

"Are those your things?" he heard Heero ask. Quatre noted the hint of amusement in the question, but the retort and denial did not make it out of his mouth. The organizers and books there were provided by the institute, but that mauve Moleskine with a small padlock, the pink four-fold umbrella, and the semi-transparent vanity case were certainly not. Dorothy suddenly sprung to his mind; the scene at the classroom replayed in his head.

He gasped. "She picked up the wrong briefcase!"

* * *

Humming the 'Sunshine Sonnet', Dorothy fingered the bits of sunlight that went through the gaps of the tree's foliage and fell on the sketch book she was flipping. She passed the sketches of perhaps one of Quatre's sisters, the cross-section illustration of an apple cut into a butterfly shape, and the outlines of a belt-like thing she guessed was an MS shoulder harness. She stopped at the drawing of a silhouetted dog running by the seashore.

She has known Quatre for almost eight years now, but he never breathed a word about how good he could draw. Yes, the guy wasn't a bragging soul and she understood that in his situation, he couldn't divulge much information about himself. But keeping his talent in arts a secret to her? It doesn't sound as though something like drawing could ruin her future. 'I'm just protecting your tomorrow,' he had said, and she decided she didn't really mind because the very words made her feel like she was a princess and he was her knight—typical fairytale dream of little girls.

She had already tossed the pad back into Quatre's briefcase when the soft sound of thudding feet crescendoed. She smiled when shadows fell on her to block the sunshine bits, then looked up at a panting fifteen-year-old Quatre.

"Mr. Winner."

"Here," Quatre said between gasps, lowering her briefcase to the ground. "I suppose you already know, Miss Dorothy. You picked up the wrong briefcase."

"Intentionally," she replied smugly. She patted the grass next to her. "Mind if we talk? I need something to tell you."

His expression reminded her of the first time she met him—two Quatre's, one from the present and one from the future. Chuckling softly, she snatched his hand and pulled him down.

"It wouldn't be long," she promised soothingly. "I know you need to know something. Don't you wonder what those dates on the paper I gave you are?"

"Of course I do," Quatre responded, slowly slipping his hand out of hers, which she prevented by intertwining their fingers tightly. He shifted a little, obviously uncomfortable. "I had a weird dream about the first date on it."

"Tell me about it."

Dorothy squeezed his hand a couple of times when he hesitated. "I think I fell asleep after you left," he said finally. "In the dream, I met a very young Dorothy Catalonia; I am there both as a six-year-old kid and as a fifteen-year-old boy. It's your birthday, September 17, 186. Is it correct?"

"Yes, that's my birthday. Are you sure it's a dream?"

He shrugged. "Not a flashback or memory. I can't remember meeting you before."

"Well, I _can_."

Quatre flashed a questioning look.

"I've met you before and I've known you for almost a decade now."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

How could she explain without getting him to think she just escaped from a juvenile ward? Dorothy wanted to laugh at the weirdness of the situation. Everything happened to her in her past; it was all in the future for him. Here she was, sitting with the man she loved and the man who loved her more, and he knew nothing about it. Her Quatre, laughing at the culinary wizardry her nine-year-old self practiced in their makeshift kitchen; her Quatre, teaching her to patch her favorite stuffed toy even if he himself knew nothing about needlework; her Quatre, trying on her father's suit after she commented on his frequent wearing of pink shirts; her Quatre, cradling her face on his hands while pressing light kisses on her cheeks and forehead…

"Give me the list," she said, and fumed when he handed her the crumpled paper. "You must take care of this! You'll need it in your travels."

"Travels?"

She ignored him, ironing out the paper with her hand. "I made this list, but you're the one who actually dictated the dates. I think it's just a cycle akin to a Mobius strip_1_: you said you memorized them from this list and I made it when you visited me. I don't know when it was first made, but it's accurate. Those are the next dates you'll be visiting me. You instructed me to give this to you the next time our timelines converge, which is now, AC 195."

"Wait, I'm lost," Quatre said. "I told you, I can't remember meeting you before."

"Because you're just fifteen," she argued. "Your travels are just starting. The last time I saw you, you were twenty-three."

"What?"

"What you just saw is not a dream, Quatre. You're time-traveling. About our childhood meeting, I speculate that you don't remember it because that's the only time we met each other in the same timeline, aside from today." She shrugged. "Your world contains too many blonde girls."

He was still confused. "I'm _time-traveling_?"

She nodded. "You didn't discuss why or how; it was too classified, you said, and it would affect our future. I'm not sure what exactly caused you this chronic dislocation, but you've inadvertently informed me it's connected to the ZERO system."

His eyes widened at the last words.

"I don't know much about the ZERO," Dorothy admitted, her face earnest. "There's a plethora of information about mobile suit interfaces from where I came, but ZERO's not included in the list. What do you know about it? Is it installed in your...Sandrock?" She slid closer to him and played with a strand of hair. "You have started time-traveling. It just means you've been exposed to it."

"I'm sorry," he said, voice a tad shaky, "but I just remembered you're from the Romafeller."

"You just realized I'm a spy," she corrected with a smirk. "Am I your enemy?"

He clamped his mouth shut into a thin line. Dorothy chortled.

"Don't worry, dear. All I want to see is how you knights in Gundanium armor play my favorite game. I'm very loyal to the Foundation, but I wouldn't let my husband-to-be _die_ because of what I know."

She loved every expression Quatre shows, but she decided now that a shocked countenance would be her favorite.

"I-I'm going to be your husband?"

"I assume so." She pursed her lips. "You blurted it out—you're twenty three then, and I'm fourteen. You said whenever it is that you came from, you're married to me. And oh, yes, we're going to survive the war."

His face was priceless as ever. His shoulders slumped, and his hand flew to his heart. "Dorothy?"

"Hmm?"

"Can we please back up? Let's pretend you haven't met me before?"

"You spoiled the most exciting part of my life by telling me who I'm going to marry and you're telling me to back up?"

He blushed. "You just did that to me!"

"You did it first," she retorted. "At least in my timeline."

Silence enveloped them after that, Quatre looking troubled, Dorothy smug. She coiled her arms around his neck; he stiffened but made no protest or movement to squirm away. He wouldn't. This was the Quatre who loved her in the past and the future, he would of course love her now in some bat-squeak echo of another time.

"Why did you take my briefcase?" he asked suddenly.

"Just wanted to know my fiancé's teenage kinks."

She could feel him roll his eyes. "Did you find any?"

"No. But you never told me you're good at drawing."

"I really haven't told you anything yet," he said with a sigh. "At least in my timeline."

She laughed at his attitude. "I'm really sorry, dear. I'm just providing you a little guide, though I know it's far from enough. I don't intend to add to your troubles."

Dorothy disentangled herself from him and cupped his face with her hands; he smiled, his first since he sat with her, and touched her fingers lightly that it almost tickled her. He believed her—his eyes were a dead give away. Perhaps it was because she mentioned the ZERO? Perhaps because of his Space Heart? She suddenly felt as though he had just been pretending not to know, as though this very Quatre knew she would do this, that she would attempt to explain his Chronic Displacement in the simplest terms and he was just checking if she could. Her train of thoughts was derailed when he fluttered his eyes close; she leaned forward instinctively, planting a kiss on his nose. She giggled when he shot her a semi-protesting glare, then he peeled her palms away from his cheeks and slid her arms past his shoulder. He slowly moved forward, closing the painful distance between them—

"Excuse me," interrupted a familiar voice. "I apologize for the disturbance, but I need to talk to Quatre now."

"Heero," Quatre almost shouted. Dorothy stifled her laughter at his clumsy, adrenaline rush-induced movements to quickly but gently tear away from her.

After the two pilots were gone, she was laughing so hard and she didn't know whether it was because of Quatre's fumbling explanation or Heero's answering miles-wide grin.

* * *

TBC

**A/N:**

1. _Mobius strip_- a surface with only one side and only one boundary component (example is the Universal Recycling Symbol).

Thank you very much for those who reviewed the first chapter, especially my LJ friend Breechiu! I know I can trust you to give brutally honest concrits. Good luck to your midterm exams!

I usually write a chapter with three parts, but I really want to end it like this. The conversation between Heero and Quatre that I originally planned to end this chapter with will be included in chapter 3. Comments and concrits are appreciated!


	3. Tempus Frangit

**Disclaimer:** Gundam Wing and all its characters © Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, and TV Asahi; The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003 by MacAdam/Cage, is authored by Audrey Niffenegger. All fics are not for profit.

Some lines from _The Time Traveler's Wife'_s Chapter four: _Lessons in Survival_ are incorporated in this chapter.

* * *

**Home Before Midnight**

by Schizoid Sprite

Chapter 3: Tempus Frangit

* * *

"Events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation."- Eudora Welty

* * *

**January 25, 187. Quatre is 15, Dorothy is 7.**

It was not a thing you could easily believe in, and Dorothy was practically talking gibberish until she mentioned the ZERO system. After he learned he was actually time-traveling, Quatre realized that Webster—and all of the pre-colonial and modern lexicologists he knew—haven't invented the words yet to describe what he felt.

He raked his fingers through his hair, worry surfacing on his face as beads of sweat. He knew he shouldn't be there. He should be where Heero was, who after wordlessly teasing him about his almost-kiss with an older Dorothy, informed him about the massive deployment of Mobile Dolls in Luxembourg._1_ They were both aware that the Treize Faction wouldn't be able to handle the situation. Heero immediately took off to the battlefield, his war chest containing nothing but his fate, and made Quatre stay.

"You can't afford to get killed at this stage of the game," Heero told him when he protested. "Not until you find Trowa."

The Japanese chose to fight where he has the least chance of survival. Quatre held in his heart that Heero himself was the 'hope' in his own Pandora's box, believing that the so-called perfect soldier would come back bearing good tidings. Now left with Noin to protect the Kingdom, he readied himself for the coming combat. He knew that it wasn't the right time to play chess with a kid eight years his junior, but…

…well, he wasn't exactly in _that _time.

"Check," he declared somewhat weakly, snatching a black pawn off the board. He would have gone back to the present if he could, if he knew how to. The list of dates and the few details she disclosed—that he'd be having numerous hegiras to her past and he'd be her husband—weren't much of a guide. They just even provided more distractions and questions. He would coax all information he needed from her the moment he gets back, he promised himself.

Sucking in a lungful of air, he eyed the seven-year-old Dorothy thoughtfully. She has been stuck on her move for a while. He took her Queen three moves ago; her doomed fate was looming, but it wasn't reason enough for her not to go down fighting.

"Uh, Dorothy?" he asked, struggling to make his brittle smile stay in place a little longer. "I hope it won't offend you or anything but it's been bothering me for quite a while now…uh, are you real?"

She looked up from the board, her face a convoluted mass of astonished cuteness. "Of course! I should be the one asking you that, since you vanished into thin air the first time I saw you, then you appeared in my closet this morning and threw up on my clothes." She raised her index finger and wagged it at him. "_Real_ people don't do that."

Quatre flinched at the throwing up detail. "I'm sorry about your clothes."

"It's okay," she beamed, focusing on the board again. "I'll just have to find some mothballs and say the scent made me sick. They know I'm allergic to those. Why did you ask if I'm real, anyway? Don't I look real?"

"You…I mean all of this feels like a dream." He watched her moved her rook five spaces forward, then she took it back quickly when he pointed out he could checkmate her already. "Who knows? Maybe I'm just dreaming about you."

"Or maybe _I'm _just dreaming about _you_," Dorothy said slowly. "Maybe we only exist in our dreams and we'll forget each other when we wake up! And you're also dreaming about the older me you said you met in your present."

"Do you believe me when I said I'm time-traveling?"

"Uh-huh."

"Why?"

Dorothy scratched her head, throwing an upward you're-more-difficult-than-this-chess-match stare at him. "Well, you don't look like a liar."

He studied the board with a smile, wondering why he felt so relieved to hear those words from a child. His thoughts wandered from one Dorothy to the next, then strayed back to their match when it occurred to him that she could checkmate him if she took his bishop with her knight. He wondered if he should tell her this.

"Do you think I'm real?" Quatre asked.

"Honestly, mister, I thought you were from the fairytales."

"Fairytales?"

"Uh-huh. There's a lot of magic there, you know. I thought you're the boy version of Cinderella: you should be home before midnight so when the magic disappears," she lowered her voice, "no one will see. Maybe that's why you vanished with the help of Fairy Godmommy. And I'm Princess Charming, and I will have to find you after I failed on following you, but you didn't leave your shoe or anything so I can't look for you."

Quatre laughed. He laughed harder when she blushed.

"Are you not a Prince?"

"No."

"Well, I still thought about the Little Prince because he came from the stars_2_, and I met you in a colony." She looked down, her face clouds. She then saw her move, made it, and flashed a triumphant smile at him. "Checkmate!"

"Yes," he clapped. "Little Miss Chess Queen du jour."

"Thank you," she breathed, turning pinker with pride. "But you _are_ real, aren't you?"

"Yeah. I think so."

"It makes me kind of wonder about fairytales. I mean, if you're real, why can't they be considered real, too?"

He wrinkled his eyebrows at the innocent question as he watched ennui hitting her, making her build a small mountain of the chess pieces. "Maybe they're real, or some little thing in them is real and people just added to it, you know?"

"Like Cinderella's Fairy Godmommy is actually a great seamstress and fashion stylist!"

"And Sleeping Beauty is in a coma."

"And Jack the beanstalk guy is a real terrific gardener!"

"And the Big Bad Wolf is a leader of a demolition team."

"And the third piggy is a successful architect!" She shook her head. "Poor first two piggies."

"And you really are Dorothy Gale_3_, and Oz is…" Quatre faltered, quite surprised at the reckless words that flew out his mouth. That wasn't exactly a good example…

"Oz is not a place where I am lost," Dorothy continued moonily. "It is my home and I'm safe there, that's why Papa talks good things about it. There are a few Wicked Witches there though. They keep on clinging to Papa like leeches because Mama is with Mama Mary and the angels now."

Quatre watched her spin one of the white bishops like a top. Her face was blank.

"I'm sorry to hear about your mother," he said apologetically. His heart began banging against the walls of his chest, and his eyes stung. He willed the images of his own childhood to go away, the times he wasted being a wet-behind-the-ears space rebel, the face of his father…

"Don't be," she winked, although her smile was a little sad around the edges. "I'm sure Mama is happy playing with God's cloud attendants."

Whatever Quatre said in response was drowned by a short series of gunshots. He bolted up from his seat and instinctively pulled and caged Dorothy in his arms, his head darting towards the direction of the sounds, the chessboard and pieces thudding to the carpeted floor.

"What's that?" Dorothy asked shakily. He looked down and tightened his hold when he saw her shocked pallor.

"I don't know. It must be a—"

"Dorothy? Dorothy, are you there?" The frantic calling from outside the room was punctuated by equally panicked knocks on the door. "Dorothy, honey?"

"That's Papa," came the girl's frightened whisper. "Hide now!"

Quatre hesitantly pulled away and made his way to her closet, clumsily slipping on the wooden pieces. He felt suddenly nauseous when he tucked himself inside, and he knew it has nothing to do with the sour smell—hints of his wasted lunch—still lingering there.

"Dorothy," he called out, stopping her in mid-stride. "I think I'm going."

"Now?"

He cocked a nod. "Yes. Check the dates I gave you for my next visit, okay?"

Before she could even respond, his vision was once again flooded with eddying rainbows.

Mr. Prince was gone.

* * *

Dorothy tottered sleepily down the hallway pulling Toto_4_, her stuffed bunny, by his long blue ears. Toto's massive body was limply sweeping the floor like a mop, and she didn't care. Why would she? She could clean him next time; Mr. Prince wouldn't see him today after all. Mr. Prince was gone, and her closet was his portal back to his world.

She never understood a thing when she asked about the gunshots. Her father's words were just a string of are-you-alright-honey's and don't-worry-it's-nothing's, and everyone who tailed her father like a parade baby-talked her and expressed their relief that she was alright. She scowled at them in reply.

"Good to know you're okay."

Her first reaction at the statement was to roll her eyes, expecting it was someone who was concerned not because she was Dorothy but because she was a Catalonia. She slowly turned around and gasped, finding herself face to face with a prince. A real one, though in her opinion he was sometimes marring the title either by being too bellicose or being too gloomy.

"Milliardo_5_," she breathed, as if his name was a secret. "What are you doing here? Is Treize here as well?"

He ignored the first question. "He's here long before everything happened."

"Everything? You mean the gunshot?"

Milliardo Peacecraft smirked and pushed his sunglasses higher on the bridge of his nose. Dorothy sometimes thinks he was a vampire, wearing those ridiculously big sunglasses even if he was strolling under the most dimly-lit hallways in the mansion at night. He strode towards her and held her hand that was clutching Toto's ears.

"I hope you sleep well tonight, Missy Dorothy. A stranger has just been gunned to death outside your room."

It wasn't news to her. There had been half a dozen attempts to kidnap her this year alone, and the culprits for the first five met their untimely demise right inside this house. The sixth was when she was walking alone on the colony streets in L4 last year, days after her birthday, when she thought she saw Mr. Prince on the sidewalk. The suspect shortly landed in calaboose after being almost crippled by her almost always too late bodyguards.

"That's not funny," she said with a frown.

"It's not supposed to be," he retorted, tugging at his forelock. "I'm told not to tell you anything, but I think you must know. They said he's out to get you, and they shot him when he's about to knock your door down. Now, remember, don't ever look under your bed tonight. He might be hiding there to get you and pull you to the realms of the dead…"

He ended it with a mocking evil laugh. She snorted; she could always do it better.

"He can't hurt me," she said, chin up. She was glad he was in a 'friendly' mood tonight—it rarely happens, and she considered hanging out with a friendly Milliardo one of the best things that could scare boredom away, ranking next to Treize agreeing to play house with her. "Mr. Prince is going to protect me."

Milliardo stopped guffawing. "Mr. Prince? I don't think so. Your imaginary friend is no match for this avenging ghost."

"He's not imaginary! In fact, I even played chess with him!"

"Yeah right," he dismissed with a yawn. He ruffled her neatly combed hair. "Go sleep now, Dorothy. Treize and I have something to talk about. Say hi to Mr. Prince for me."

She opened her mouth for a rejoinder, but no sound came out until he was already engulfed by the shadows of the hallway.

"I know he's not a dream," she told herself, pouting. She pulled up Toto into a hug, ignoring the wary stares of her black-clad bodyguards lining up the aisle as she stomped her way back to her room. Before she entered, a glint on the floor arrested her attention. She stooped and picked up the thing—a plastic ring, the kind you would expect to get from a cheap toy vending machine. The bodyguards were pointedly observing her now. She arched an eyebrow at them and stepped inside her room, slamming the door shut and plunging to her bed.

She fell asleep with the ring on her pinkie, and she dreamed about Mr. Prince telling her he wasn't just a dream.

* * *

**July 5, 179. Quatre is 15.**

Quatre knew he wasn't back in 195. He found himself on an elevator and fortunately, he was alone. He didn't know how he looks like when he appears or disappears. Does he come from a sudden puff of smoke? Does he materialize part by part? Does he look like a ghost? The only things he was aware of whenever he travels were the happy colors that could make him downright unhappy and the constantly horrible gag reflexes.

The elevator door opened and a blonde woman marched in, clutching a thick band of folders and papers. He greeted her with a smile even if he didn't feel like smiling at all, and she returned it with an equally amicable gesture. There was something about being able to cajole a smile from a woman, a pretty woman especially, that could make him feel light and satisfied. Glancing sideways at the woman, he was pretty certain she wasn't Dorothy. She looked very familiar though, only he couldn't place where or when he saw her. Her age must be playing at twenty six and twenty seven; she has an open face, the kind that would prompt strangers to ask for the time or directions. Platinum blonde hair neatly brushed to the side, a slightly upturned nose, blue-green eyes…

A folder slipped from the woman's grasp when the elevator stopped on the second floor. Quatre picked it up for her; an ID fell from it, and his eyes widened when he read her name there.

"Thank you, thank you," the woman was saying politely even before he handed her the folder. Quatre swallowed hard, picked up the ID and gave it back to her.

"Y-you're Quatrina Winner?"

She nodded. "Yes. You are?"

He was tongue-tied. What should he say? What should he feel? What should he think about? Here, right now, flashing a sunny smile at him, was his mother he was never able to talk to or see since he was "born". He could still remember the day he stumbled upon his birth certificate and found out he was gestated in a test tube, like all of his twenty nine sisters_6_. His parents' names, Zayeed Winner and Quatrina Raberba Winner, were probably the most difficult and longest names his seven-year-old self was able to memorize from that piece of paper. He hated the names—he knew he hated his father and he forced to believe he hated his mother, too, even if she wasn't around to be hated. Now that he was standing just a few feet beside her, the negative feeling was the farthest thing from what his system was screaming.

"Your name?" she asked again.

"Quatre," he said hesitantly.

"Quatre," she repeated, and her stare drifted off from him. He bit his lip when he saw her hand caressing her flat stomach while still mouthing his name. "That's a nice name."

His hand automatically found its way to his chest, his heart was thumping madly. He should say it. He has to say it _now._

"Mrs. Winner?" he said quietly. "I…"

The elevator doors opened again as they reached the fourth floor. She waited.

"I love you," he said finally, unaware of the sole tear that squeezed itself from his eye. He dashed outside before the doors closed, her stunned face still glowing at the back of his head. He found a bench and slumped there. He wept and he didn't know why.

* * *

**October 14, 207. Quatre is 15, Dorothy is 28.**

When he detached his tear-stained face from his cupped hands, the environment has changed. He was on a playground and seated on a swing, and a few inches from his own face was a girl's. He knew who it was and he was glad.

"Dorothy," he said. "Am I back? What are those gunshots we heard before I left?"

The little girl's face curled into a wide grin. "You really are him!"

"Uh, yeah," he mumbled, rubbing at his eyes. "Still the Quatre Raberba Winner you beat at chess and…"

"Daddy."

Quatre froze. "What? What did you say?"

"Daddy," the girl repeated with a wink, the word floating out sweet and round from her tongue, murmured with just a little tilt of her head. "You're my daddy."

"Audrey!"

Quatre and the girl turned their heads at the voice. Clawing at the pale locks that swatted across her face as the wind swept, a woman was walking blindly towards them. Quatre gripped the chains of the swing as he levered himself up. He squinted at the approaching woman, and the nearer she gets, the louder his heart drummed. He had a feeling that...

"Audrey," the woman told the little girl in a lightly chiding voice. "I told you that peanut butter doesn't go with anchovy in sandwiches, didn't I? Your lunchbox is a mess and—"

"Dorothy," he said in amazement when she looked up and confirmed his guesses. She mouthed his name exactly the same way he remembered his own mother doing it just a few minutes—or years—earlier.

"Ma," Audrey called, tugging at the hem of her mother's dress. "He's daddy, right? He looks very young, doesn't he?"

For a moment, this fully grown-up Dorothy just stared at him. When he spoke her name again, he was sure he saw tears before she swayed her way away from him, Audrey dashing after her to ask her what's wrong.

* * *

TBC

**A/N:**

1. The Romafeller Foundation launched an attack on the Treize Faction's headquarters on Luxembourg using Mobile Dolls (from Episode 33: _The Lonely Battlefield_ to Episode 34: _And Its Name Is Epyon_)

2. The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Originally, it's Relena who first alluded to the title character: In her Episode Zero, she asks if Zechs is a prince of the stars after he saved her; in Episode 2, _The Gundam Deathscythe_, Relena asked herself if Heero is a 'Little Prince' who fell on Earth after hearing a news announcement saying the five meteorites that entered the atmosphere weren't manned spacecrafts as previously rumored. Dorothy has this propensity to allude to fairytales or to express herself through pseudo-fairytales so I thought it would fit if I borrow the reference from Relena. :)

3. Dorothy Gale, the main character of L. Frank Baum's book, _The Wizard of Oz_. There are several references to the book in the series: Dorothy Catalonia herself and her gold-plated vehicles, the OZ (whose emblem was a lion), the Specials' emblem looking like the Tin Woodsman's head in profile, and one of OZ's callsigns is 'Scarecrow'.

4. Toto- Dorothy Gale's pet dog.

5. In Episode 42: _Battleship Libra_, Dorothy, when she is sweet-talking Milliardo to let her join him, she mentions something about Milliardo, Treize, and herself playing when they were kids. (I almost forgot about this, lol)

6. When the colonists first arrived into space, pregnant women had problems giving birth to newborn babies. This resulted in artificial reproduction (babies born this way are called 'test tube babies' for lack of a better term). This problem was later solved, except for within the Winner family who had been in space since the formation of the colonies. However, unknown to Quatre, he was born naturally, although his mother died during childbirth. His twenty-nine sisters were all test tube babies.

About the chapter title: _Tempus Frangit_ ("Time Breaks") is a Latin pun on the phrase _Tempus Fugit_ ("Time Flies").  
____

Again, thanks for the reviews and concrits! They're so much appreciated! I said in the previous chapter that I'd include a Heero-Quatre convo here, but it appeared it wouldn't affect the storyline so much so I didn't include it anymore. XD Yeah, I know I'm so fickle. Scissored Kismets followers, I haven't abandoned that story yet! After I finish this ficlet at six chapters, I will get back to it, I promise.

I'd just like to share: the muse of this story, _The Time Traveler's Wife_, already has a film adaptation. I haven't seen it yet, but it looks very promising. It stars Eric Bana as the male protagonist and Rachel MacAdams as his love interest. I think I'll go watch it this weekend.

To Breechiu: I think you're going to stay here for a while so an account here isn't a bad idea. :) Replying to reviews here is easier with logged users, and I'm really looking forward to the day you write your own fanfiction (after you finish your anthropomorph fic). I know how you adore Gundam 00 so much. XD

Update next week!


	4. Catharsis

**Disclaimer: **Gundam Wing and all its characters © Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, and TV Asahi; The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003 by MacAdam/Cage, is authored by Audrey Niffenegger. All fics are not for profit.

Some lines from the book's first chapter, _First Date, One_, are incorporated in this chapter.

* * *

**Home before Midnight**

by Schizoid Sprite

Chapter 4: Catharsis

* * *

"The body is like a clock, the workings of which were determined by the shapes and positions of its interlocking parts."- Santorio Santorio

* * *

**November 11, 195. Quatre is 15, Dorothy is 16.**

An earsplitting crash and a little earthquake shook him awake from his stupor. He blinked images of his last time-travel away and rushed to the secret hangar (that wasn't secret anymore, after Noin revealed everything to Relena following the attack on the Kingdom). A mountain of white and violet metals—a Taurus MS—was sprawled on the floor, and some of the chains and cranes that were supposed to hold it up were tangled with its steel limbs. There must be someone who tried to pilot it and failed. The cockpit door hissed rather balefully as it opened, and he skulked around it several times before peeking.

"Dorothy!" he exclaimed, and there she lied, pale rivulets of her hair pooling around the cockpit. She squinted, hugging the shoulder harness as she trembled, and only when he stuck his head inside did he learn she was actually giggling. "What are you doing?!" he rebuked. "It's dangerous!"

"Quatre" was the only comprehensible word he heard from her; everything else was drowned in her chuckles. He anchored himself lower inside when she awkwardly gesticulated for him to come closer.

"When are you coming from?" she muttered, cupping his face. As if his expression answered her, she said, "Oh yes, of course, I forgot…Yes, the present…" She pressed a light kiss on his lips, and he was surprised that he was not surprised at all. It felt so normal, so practiced, like she has been doing it to him all his life. He felt her arms smoothly slither around him like eels.

"You said I'll know how to maneuver a mobile-something," she said, her tone a tad frustrated. "Why can't I pilot this thing?"

She was talking about a Quatre from the future, obviously. The little revelation scared him a bit, part because he was worried about her getting physically involved in the war, and part because he knew she could be a very formidable enemy. It was not her choice, but she was not on their side from the very start.

"I haven't told you anything about mobile suits," he said. "Not yet."

"You're…"

"Fifteen years old. The present, remember?"

"Oh. Right."

A short stretch of silence reigned over them. She carefully brushed his bangs away so she could look at him straight in the eyes, and there was something in hers that made him ask apprehensively, "Am I different? You've met older versions of me. Am I so different from what you expected?"

"Not really," she answered earnestly. "You're still the you I've met before. You didn't change much when you reached twenty-three…or is it twenty-four? I'm not sure, it's very confusing."

"Confusing indeed," he breathed into her hair, and he decided that the smell of artificial fruit in shampoos was not bad at all. He pulled his head back and frowned. Did he just nuzzle her?

"I don't believe you can be confused," Dorothy whispered. "Poleaxing me has been your leisure pursuit, and with that list of dates I thought your travels are well-planned."

"They're not," he sighed. "I just wish I can control my travels so I can plan everything. It's hard being ignorant about this "impairment" and I doubt if there's a doctor around who knows what to do about this. Anyway, I beg to differ about the poleaxing part—_you_ are the one who's always leaving me flabbergasted. Beating me at chess as a little horror eight years my junior, then stunning me as a twenty-something goddess with our daughter…"

She was smiling and she balked at the last words. "Our daughter? We're going to have a girl?"

"Oh. Sorry. I shouldn't have told you that."

"Did she take after you?"

_She's so beautiful, exactly like you,_ he thought, but did not say. "I'm sorry. Classified information."

She beamed. "That's so _you_. You always keep every 'future' thing from me, though sometimes your impervious walls would crumble against my wheedling ways. But…"

"But what?" He suppressed the urge to ask what those 'wheedling ways' were.

"There's something a bit different about you. Ignoring the fact that you know our daughter, you're less. I mean, before, you're sort of…_more_. You_ know me_ back then, so—"

"So right now you're telling me I'm somewhat gauche."

"No," she laughed. "But thinking about it now, yes, I guess you're right."

"I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologize for everything, you know. But don't stop pouting, it's adorable."

He blinked. "I'm not even pouting."

"I just love it when you protrude your lips like that—"

"I said I'm not pouting."

She chortled. "Believe it or not, five years or more from now you're still reiterating that statement accompanied by a fleshy jut of your lower lip. I started teasing you about it when I was ten."

He hummed and inhaled her scent again, for a moment not knowing what else to say to that.

"Quatre?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you love me now?"

He blinked at the question, taken aback. _Would she laugh if I say yes?_ he asked himself, he asked his Space Heart. _Would she be hurt if I say no?_ He loved her in her yesterday, he loved her in his tomorrow. Now that their times have finally intertwined, what should he feel? Honestly speaking, he was just plain afraid at this very minute.

Afraid that he was indeed in love.

"Don't worry about it," she said soothingly. "Call me overoptimistic or narcissistic or anything, but I know you love me. In some other time, if not now. Be assured that my heart is only yours. In the meantime…"

"In the meantime?" In the meager brightness of the cockpit he saw her blushing cheeks. Could she see his?

"Oh Quatre, I know you don't know me well yet, but can't you guess a thing or two?"

Quatre couldn't get an inkling of what she was saying until she commenced going through the layered fortresses of his Sanc school uniform. The warmth of her nimble fingertips turned his arms into dense lumps of gooseflesh even before they come in direct contact with his skin. Soon, he found himself unclasping her from the complicated safety straps and belts, planting warm kisses wherever he could spot the buttermilk color of her skin.

"Naughty at fifteen," he heard Dorothy's seductive sigh in his left ear.

The hell with virtue. After she was fully freed from the harness, he easily figured out the mechanics of her dress.

* * *

**Various dates. Quatre is 15.**

He attempted to find patterns or clues that would signal another trip, thinking it was like a disease that would show symptoms. He studied the dates, felt the dents and dips of each letter and number on the paper, even made mini-Rosarche tests out of the clumsy inkblots adorning a kindergartener Dorothy's cacography—all just to know if there was a certain logic or rule in these weird dislocations. Everything was in vain, of course.

The thought that it was a punishment did cross his mind. Some of his travels would click open the lock of his closet and every rotting skeleton he crammed there would topple out, deriding and accusing him. For more than a score he had gone back to the day of his father's death and he watched helplessly at his grief-stricken self, the bloodcurdling screams becoming the odious soundtrack of his fractured timeline. He had gone back to the day he eradicated a colony in the space map with a single shot, he witnessed Trowa's sacrifice again and again as though it was a video set to replay itself after it reached the ending.

In all of these there was nothing he could do. He longed to yell "Go away Trowa, the me you're talking to won't listen!" or "Hey me! Calm down please, you don't know what you're doing! It's war, things like this happen, things like—" and he would stop, realizing that the words were just in his head and they would never come out his mouth. He couldn't change anything; he couldn't save his father, or Trowa, or himself. The next thing he'd see was the medicine bottle-blue of outer space, the scene blurred with his tears, the afterglow of explosion still lingering.

The thought that it might be a gift did cross his mind, too, because if it weren't for this impairment he wouldn't have met his mother. He remembered the first date of his parents, when he offered Quatrina a seat on the train; he remembered how she laughed at a young Zayeed, who shot him a warning glare. He pretended to bump into her so he would feel she was real, he shocked her—in a variety of age and places—by mumbling random I-love-you's and giving her "accidental" hugs. That made him appear like some kind of a maniac, but he couldn't care less. Every episode was refreshing and everything felt right and real…

…except that day when he noticed a growing lump on Quatrina's belly.

All Winner children were incubated in test tubes, he was certain about that. He debunked his 'it's just baby fat' theory when her tummy got a tad too big, and when everything else pointed to the possibility that she might be expecting, he couldn't do anything but cave in.

"Let's name him Quatre," she told Zayeed one day, delicately cradling her stomach.

_No, it can't be me,_ he told himself, even though he confirmed his birthday was only two months away from that date. The next thing he knew, he had travelled two months forward, and he witnessed how the boy that was him cried to life while a smiling Quatrina pass away on the sheets.

Of course. It was always his fault.

His father must have thought he would blame himself for her death, or perhaps they thought he would feel special and superior to his other siblings if he knew this. Either way, he couldn't change anything. She still died, and he still lived.

The day he learned of this revelation, the situation in his present has gone worse. He and the other Gundam pilots—including Trowa, who by some miracle was alive and only suffered from amnesia—joined forces to fight the paramilitary group called White Fang. Milliardo Peacecraft, its new leader, was hell-bent on ramming the completed space battleship Libra to Earth, thinking it would end all battles and they could start an era of peace._1_ Quatre tried making sense of it but he simply couldn't; it was the decision of a desperate man, someone who was playing god by punishing and destroying a vastly sinful place and starting over again. It wasn't right. His Space Heart was telling him it wasn't right.

Just when he was being goaded by these circumstances to break down, _she_ would appear before him, assuring him that everything will fall right into place. Dorothy would be there as a girl, as a woman, as something in between, and there was no difference at all because she was his heroine. She wasn't aware of this. She would be too engrossed when he would quiz her on multiplication tables, when he would teach her 'Happy Birthday' on the piano, or when he would correct the French terms she was shouting in their occasional fencing matches. She wasn't aware that she was making him feel whole, even if in so many aspects he was broken beyond repair.

"You look tired," a nine-year-old Dorothy said one time, curling against him like a hedgehog. "Something happened in the future? I mean, in your present?"

_Yes,_ he thought. _I'm onboard Peacemillion with the others, and we can't think of a good plan to defeat the continuously increasing number of Mobile Doll troops. You've joined the White Fang, you know that? You've joined Zechs Merquise, or Milliardo Peacecraft, and you're fighting against the Gundams. We're enemies, you know that?_

"Mr. Prince?"

He forced a smile. "No. Nothing happened, everything's okay in my present."

"You don't look like a liar," she said, "but when you try to be one you look as if you're shouldering the problems of the whole world. Stop it."

"Dorothy…"

She tore away from him when he moved to circle his arms around her. "I don't like it when you lie. You really don't know how to and your face is a dead giveaway, but I feel bad when you don't want to say anything about it to me."

"I'm sorry. I can't tell you." _I tried to, but I really can't._

"You don't think I'll understand, right? Because I'm just a kid?"

"That's not it."

Heaving a sigh, she slumped back to her position and let herself be enveloped by his arms. He buried his face in her hair, and for once he succumbed to the peace that only her presence could give him.

He wept.

* * *

**December 9, 195. Quatre is 15, Dorothy is 16.**

"So this is how the MD command system from Epyon operates," Dorothy mused, warily watching the formulae in nixie tubes floating around the room. With the helmet on, everything seemed to emit a Pepto-Bismol pink glow. "Mr. Milliardo is a true genius. This way, even the soulless Mobile Dolls are able to fight with the mind of a human."_2_

She pressed her palms on the system pad and maneuvered her new toys in organized phalanxes, her choreography for them ready. "Now my precious Dolls, let's see a spectacular dance."

She watched the marionettes comply with her whispers, and at first the whole show was gloriously beautiful. When the Gundams started dancing along with the beat she set, she knew there was something wrong.

"I don't understand," she said with a hiss. "The Gundams are predicting each of my moves! But how? What's happening?!"

ZERO heard her. And it answered.

It showed her a memory from two years ago; the exact date was August 14. She was there, sitting sandwiched between a black-garbed woman she forgot the name of and her grandfather Dermail. Her face was half-hidden in the fishnet veil but she wasn't crying. Dorothy remembered it well. She didn't cry, because her father said that dying while fighting was not something to mourn about.

Some well-coiffed women on the next pew huddled close together and wept rather loudly, and Dorothy recalled the repugnance she harbored for them right that very moment. The priest intoned something she didn't catch. She refocused and heard him saying, "_An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth_, the Bible says. It is war, and our brother chose the path of a true servant of peace; his soul will surely not rest in peace if we dwell on revenge. Let us instead follow the example Jesus has taught us: love thy neighbor. Let us leave everything to God, let us lift our hearts to Him…"

"I think I like the eye for an eye stuff better," someone grumbled behind Dorothy. She wondered if there was someone else, aside from herself, who wasn't disturbed by the tooth for a tooth part.

People were soon leaving and Dorothy felt the need to be alone so she joined the crowd. Of course, _he _would thwart her—he would never let her feel alone when he was there. Never.

"Quatre," her voice broke when she saw him, a damned Moses who cleaved the sea of time, now struggling to cross the sea of fake people in attempt to reach her. She wanted to run to him but she was suddenly paralyzed. Her heart was drumming loud as he approached, and when they collided in a tight hug, her tears finally fell….

She blinked the memory away.

_Of course, ZERO_, she told the system. _Someone who knows how I move, someone who knows how I think…there's no one else but…_

"Quatre Raberba Winner."

She didn't know if it was just some kind of auditory hallucination, but she thought she heard him say her name after the last syllable of his rolled off her tongue.

* * *

TBC...

**A/N:**

1. This occurred in the anime from _Episode 40: A New Leader_ to _Episode 43: Target: Earth._ Milliardo Peacecraft plans to drop space battleship Libra on Earth so it would be plagued by a never-ending winter.

2. This scene is from _Episode 44: Go Forth Gundam Team_.

About the chapter title: _Catharsis_- in psychology, the process of bringing to surface repressed emotions, complexes, and feelings in an effort to identify or relieve them.

__

Yaay, four chapters down! I originally planned to include the Libra scene in this chapter, but acads ate up all my time and I have to end it here. Just so you know, I got the dates with scenes that occurred in the anime from a timeline in aboutgundamwing(dot)com. This, in turn, came from various official publications about the anime. The dates from our main characters' pasts are just products of my convoluted mind (the death of Dorothy's father is in AC 193; there's no exact date indicated so I invented one. :P)

In my outline, nothing _happens_ between Dorothy and Quatre until they are eighteen, but by then the wars will be over and the mobile suits are gone. XD Sorry, I just really think that sex inside a MS is hot. XP

And alas, I haven't watched the movie yet, again because of acads. :( Sometimes, school really makes me want to time travel. Anyhoo, I hope you enjoyed this installment! The next chapter will be a bit longer (and perhaps late) because I'll include there the Libra scene, which will play a very important role in this fic. Reviews and concrits are greatly appreciated!


	5. Widow's Walk

**Disclaimer: **Gundam Wing and all its characters © Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, and TV Asahi; The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003 by MacAdam/Cage, is authored by Audrey Niffenegger. All fics are not for profit.

* * *

**Home before Midnight**

by Schizoid Sprite

Chapter 5: Widow's Walk

* * *

"Time, whose tooth gnaws away at everything else, is powerless against truth. "--Thomas Huxley

* * *

**Various dates. Quatre and Dorothy, various ages.**

For some reason, Dorothy understood why many people called that part of the house the 'widow's walk'.

Trepidation would be her frequent company while she waits there. She tried not to think about the idea of death, but it was there. Sometimes she would stand against the railings, imagining she was a wife waiting for her husband's return from the sea. A lot of wives would be waiting for nothing, because back then the belief was that lives of seafarers almost always revolved around only one fate, hence the name of the structure.

She warded this thought off her head, because Quatre was no ordinary sailor and he was traveling on no ordinary sea. She would then avert her eyes to the luminous umbrella of make-believe stars above, praying, thinking if her own husband would be sailing home from the turbulent waves of space and time.

The lengths of Quatre's hegiras range from a few minutes to three weeks. It was not a big deal for Dorothy to wait—after all, it was what she has been doing all her life. It was the worrying part that was graveling her to death. After thoroughly studying his leaps from one date to another, they found out that he would only be time-traveling to the events that have or would have a great emotional impact to him. She knew how brutal time was to dredge up the ghosts of his past. Once, Quatre returned home with blood splattered all over his front and he collapsed in her arms, saying he just wanted to 'forget it and move on' but time wouldn't let him. She asked him what happened and he never gave her the details. He instead requested her to sing a lullaby for him because he said he was tired and sleepy. He was trying to escape.

"Music relaxes me," he'd said, "but there's no music that could ever put me in real peace other than your voice. Sing for me, please?"

And she sang for him, all notes coming out off-key because she felt so helpless, so useless. Everything in Dorothy-speak—even the most unintelligible words behind every sob—was all very clear to Quatre, so when he heard her cry he knew the appropriate response. In the end, it was him who sang for her so she would feel okay. He hummed the 'Sunshine Sonnet', the piano piece both of them completed in various ages and times, and she slowly drifted to dreamland.

Sometimes, he would be there in the morning. Oftentimes, she was alone.

She misses a lot of things when he was away, and it's his kisses that made it to the top of the list. The soft assault of his we-shouldn't-be-doing-this kiss, followed by the harder but-your-lips-taste-so-good kiss. The tingling feel of his I-accept-your-apology-but-you-really-make-me-mad-sometimes kiss. The crushing pressure of his I'll-spend-every-second-of-my-life-with-you-if-I-can-help-it kiss. Her least favorite was the chaste I-think-I'm-traveling-again kiss, but she loved it all the same because it was just as sweet as the others.

She misses the way he would blush whenever he would say something mushy, as if he was embarrassed; the way he seemed to be so pleased when she would play with his locks. His laugh, his lopsided smile, even his apologies. She misses everything about him.

She knew that Quatre was trying his best to will himself to go back to her as fast as possible, especially when Audrey came to their lives. Audrey, or miniature Dorothy as what Relena calls the child, was Quatre and Dorothy's most precious gem. She got the blueness of Quatre's eyes and the rest made her a dead ringer of her mother: her pointed nose, her small cherry mouth, her flushed pallor, her golden locks. Dorothy understood why Quatre loved Audrey so much: she was their only child who lived. Dorothy had six miscarriages before and Quatre always took the blame because according to him, "there's something wrong with me".

A little does he know, there was something wrong with Dorothy, too.

Not necessarily connected with her pregnancy, though. She guessed it all started when she was exposed to the ZERO, during her fight with Quatre onboard the battleship Libra. She forced to believe he was just telling her lies: _You're a very kind person, kinder than me...You're just the same way I used to be…You despise your own kindness and your own hatred of war. You should never try to fight your kindness. Trowa taught me that…._

_Lies!_ ZERO shrieked in her head. _They're all lies!_

She wanted to believe ZERO, but Quatre knew her like the back of his hand. She was going to lie to herself if she was going to say those were not true.

The next events became a tad mystifying. She visited Quatre in the hospital where he was recovering from the stab wound she gave him; he was of course happy to see her, much to Trowa's wonder. She knew Quatre was downplaying the pain when she asked about the wound, even if he looked very truthful when he said it wasn't that sore anymore.

"Not painful?" she asked mischievously. "Then why are you whimpering?"

"I'm not—" he gasped, then cut whatever explanation he had with a whine. She rolled her eyes then, thinking he was just either humoring her or making her laugh with his weird sense of humor. He was still whimpering by the time she bade him farewell.

Dr. Iria Winner, who was taking care of Quatre, told Dorothy it would take him months before he would be released.

"He's strong enough to get out of here tonight," she said with a flip of hair. Iria contacted her that same night, informing her that by some miracle, Quatre's wound healed extremely fast and he was as physically fine as he was when he first ran away from home. Like what Dorothy had said, Quatre would be discharged that night.

Years after that, when the whole Solar System became aware of their established relationship, they turned out to be the biggest magnetizers of press attention in the business world. Dorothy was kind of making the paparazzi's work easier with her dangerous sexual proclivities, but she would never let them get away with even a single photograph. Once when they were on a benefit function, she pulled Quatre out of the main hall and into the music room, where they made out. Quatre had hoisted her up the piano keyboards and the noise they were making were rendered inaudible by the discordant sounds of the keys under her moving weight. She was too busy playing with his earlobe when a sudden flash blinded her for a second.

"Your camera's malfunctioning," she lied, testing her suspicions about the effect of ZERO on her, and then there was a small exploding sound from the slightly opened door. She heard a small shriek and shuffling feet, and she laughed furtively in Quatre's ear, resuming to their activity.

She muttered the same camera fib when they were doing the same 'business'—in a telephone booth, at the backstage after Quatre's political speech, and in their private spaceport (which was Dorothy's least favorite venue, because microgravity could _shrink_ her expectations). She used that lie again when one photographer attempted to take a picture of newborn Audrey; she saw how the camera broke in splinters, how the man stared at her in plain horror. Tabloid articles about her having psychokinetic powers mushroomed, and people of course dismissed them as the most ridiculous products of yellow journalism.

Her suspicions were confirmed, though: she could indeed turn lies into truths.

Sometimes, she would use it just for her amusement. She would lie about the weather system, make winter in the middle of summer and throw the whole colony into chaos. She would immediately turn everything back to normal with another lie, and then start trouble again whenever she liked.

Quatre knew nothing about this. She made it a point to never tell a lie whenever he was around. Also, after Quatre stressed himself out to help the weather system operators about the "malfunctions" of the engines, she promised herself never to use her ability just for her entertainment ever again.

But Dorothy's mind was restless; it toyed with some important what-might-have-been's. What if she lie that her father was alive? What if she lie that the Eve Wars never happened? She was too afraid to try and utter these; she thought she wouldn't be ready for the consequences. But she wanted answers.

After months of tracking down plus a little bit of bribery, she was able to secure a copy of the ZERO system software from a former crew member of the Peacemillion and had it installed in her notebook. ZERO gave her the questions, so ZERO might have the answers, too.

What the System showed her was something she wasn't prepared for.

IT'S LIKE A MOBIUS STRIP, said the nixie tube letters across the green monitor. NO ENDING, NO BEGINNING.

A scene from not so long ago flashed across the screen, and she was there, enveloped in Quatre's embrace. She remembered this one. It was the night of her sixth and last miscarriage.

"You love me, right?" she sobbed. "You love me even if I can't give you a child, right? You love me—"

"Shhh," Quatre soothed her, rubbing her back. "What kind of questions are those? Of course, I do love you. And you're going to have my child. I told you I met her in the future, remember? She's going to be so beautiful like you, and we're going to name her Audrey. She's going to have your tresses, your smile, your voice from your childhood…"

The picture faded out, and the message flashed again: IT'S LIKE A MOBIUS STRIP. NO ENDING, NO BEGINNING.

"You love me, right? You love me even if I can't give you a child, right? _You love me_…"

LIE.

_You love me…_

LIE.

_You love me…_

LIE.

When Dorothy figured out what the System was trying to tell her, she dropped her notebook and stared wide at it, her heart throbbing hard.

* * *

**September 2, 203. Quatre is 23, Dorothy is 23.**

The clock chimed midnight when Quatre materialized beneath it.

"Dorothy," he greeted tiredly but cheerily, wobbling towards her. "Did I miss your birthday?"

She pushed herself off the doorframe and welcomed him in her arms. "No," she murmured to his collar, "you've just been gone for a week and three days, and I missed you so much. It's hard missing you, you know?"

"If you think it's hard missing me," he whispered with a feather-like kiss to her ear, "you should try missing you."

She laughed. "Since when did you learn to be a smoothie?"

"Since the day I met a little girl from my own version of The Wizard of Oz."

She rolled her eyes even if he couldn't see it. "Seems like you're in a good mood. When did you come from this time?"

"AC 193," he replied readily. He enclosed her fully in his strong arms and without him knowing it, he had started to move her around in a little waltz. "A sly little fourteen-year-old you just cajoled me into telling you that we're going to be married. I'm so reckless to fall into your little trap. Because of that, my fifteen-year-old self would suffer from your earliest strategies of flummoxing people."

She remembered. She tried to smile but she couldn't, so she just concentrated on the steady three-four, three-four beats of her heart, the music of their dance. "My favorite facial expression of yours," she said quietly, "is when I told you you're going to be my husband. If the teenage me didn't inveigle you into ferreting out that information, I wouldn't have seen the priceless picture."

"Poor me," he chortled. "You never told me that it's you who proposed, though."

Dorothy halted for a beat. "_I _proposed?"

"You proposed _first_," he chuckled. "In your timeline. You gave me a plastic ring, remember? The same day I blurted out information about our marriage."

She shrugged. "Can't recall."

"Lie," he joked.

That single word did it. The already frail layer of her gay façade was wiped out; she broke their dance and stepped back, her eyes suddenly filmed with tears. Quatre's face contorted in worry upon seeing her reaction. He locked his fingers on her back, perhaps in attempts to keep her in a little jail while his questions slowly spilled out.

"Dorothy? Are you okay?"

_No._ "Of course."

"Why are you crying?" He disentangled his fingers and cupped her face, thumbing the first tears that rolled down her cheeks. "What's the problem?"

_Everything._ "Nothing."

"Dorothy." His voice carried a threat, but his face was curling with plea. "Tell me."

"I have nothing to tell."

"Don't lie to me, please."

That magic word worked like slicing an onion to her. Her eyes stung but she blinked the tears away, not letting them run down her face by wiping them away before they even fall to her cheekbone. The teardrops increased in number and she couldn't take care of each anymore. She let them flow freely. "I've been lying to you all my life, Quatre," she said, her voice broken. "I'm so sorry…"

"What are you talking about? Dorothy—"

"Listen to me carefully. Quatre, you never really loved me."

"What?"

"You don't love me. I lied when I said you love me, and it came true."

"I don't follow—"

"Once upon a time," she started, raising a finger to her lips to silence him, "there's a little girl who met the Prince of Clocks. The Prince came from the Land of Tomorrow, and there, he said he was living happily with a Princess, who is actually the grown-up version of the girl. The girl met a younger Prince and informed him about this and when they were married in the Land of Tomorrow, they thought they'll live happily ever after. But there's no such thing as a happy ending. The Princess found out that she has this power of turning lies into truths. The greatest lie that she ever uttered is that the Prince loved her. It all came true.

"There's no ending and no beginning, said the Genii who granted her the power. You'll never know when you first lied and it doesn't matter at all because, well, you _lied_. You're in a world where the clocks are messed up, where there are sandstorms inside the hourglass, so there's no sense talking about the when's. The Prince of Clocks continued on leaping back to the Kingdom of Yesterday just to tell the little girl about the marriage. When that girl grows up, she would tell the younger Prince about it, and in the future she will realize that everything is a fallacy. It was all an unending cycle, a dream. It's all a lie."

The silence that followed grew dense. Quatre brushed his bangs away from his eyes and frowned. "I don't understand."

"The ZERO system gave me the ability to turn lies into truths, Quatre," she explained, which she deemed unnecessary because she knew he understood. "I was first exposed to it during our fight on Libra."

"Which is way later than the day I started loving you. I love you even before Libra, Dorothy. When I first met you in the Sanc, in that music room—"

"No ending and no beginning, ZERO said. You loved me before the Eve War because I told you beforehand I'm going to be your wife. You loved me in your travels, when you meet me as a child because you know you're going to marry me. You were twenty three when you told a younger me about our marriage, correct? You're already my husband then, and you believed you're wedded to me because you love me. But we're wrong. You loved me because it wasn't true. You're married to the woman who was damned by a machine, who uttered untrue words for countless times, words that eventually became a curse that you bring in your trips. I lied to you without me knowing it…"

"It's not counted as a lie if you don't know it's untrue! Dorothy—"

"ZERO begs to differ," her voice broke. "I lied about you loving me, _you_ told me about our future together, _I _told you about out future together…" she laughed mirthlessly. "Who would've thought it's just a bedtime story, a twisted fairytale? It all has to end…"

"This," he said firmly, "this relationship is what is real, Dorothy. It's not a lie, and nothing has to end."

"Don't be so childish."

"I'm not being childish! It's not just a game for me. I love you, and hell, I know you love me too! ZERO has nothing to do with this—"

"ZERO made everything happen for us. It brought us together."

"And that's reason enough for it to tear us apart? Please…"

"But Quatre…"

"Stop being so selfish, Dorothy. I need you. You can't just leave me like this."

"And why not?!" she fumed. "How come am I being selfish in telling you the whole truth? I'm giving you your freedom."

"And I don't accept it! Dorothy, I don't need freedom, I just need you." He grasped her hands in a vise-like grip. "Don't leave me, please. I'll die without you."

"I promise to send flowers to your funeral."

With that, she forcefully pried her hands out of his and walked away.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

TBC.

**A/N:**

Sorry for the lateness! You know the drill…offline commitments and all. XD Anyhoo, this chapter became a tad too AU-ish, chock-full of cheesy lines and angst, but I hope you enjoyed it.

The Libra scene has always been baffling me, and it's the first element in the series that gave me an idea that Quatre really have met Dorothy before for him to say she's kind. I originally thought it's because of the Space Heart, but playing around the sandbox is always fun. XD It just so happened that I still have the Time Traveler's Wife hangover when the thought drifted in my head. Voila, this fic is born.

Thank you for the reviews and concrits! I really appreciate them!! Sable Cold: No, I'm not really deviating from the outline. I just thought of adding something that won't make the MS cockpit scene lame, and I thought about sex. XD This is after all inspired by a book with a lot of sex in it so I thought, "Why not?" Some naughty stuff every once in a while won't hurt. XD

I'll be updating next week! Hint: you'll know what'll happen next if you notice a "trivial" detail here that's also present in the previous chapters. Questions that this chapter raised are going to be answered in the next chap. :)


	6. Always Again

**Disclaimer: **Gundam Wing and all its characters © Sotsu Agency, Sunrise, and TV Asahi; The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003 by MacAdam/Cage, is authored by Audrey Niffenegger. All fics are not for profit.

A few lines from the book's chapter _Dissolution_ are incorporated in this chapter; the book's last chapter is also entitled _Always Again_.

* * *

**Home before Midnight**

by Schizoid Sprite

Chapter 6: Always Again

* * *

"Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity." -Henry Van Dyke

* * *

**January 14, 209. Quatre is 23.**

"Audee, our pyjama party is coed?"

"No it's not."

"Then what's that man doing on your bed?"

Quatre, eyes still stinging from the tears the dizzying journey to that date and his previous conversation with Dorothy caused, jammed a pillow under his head and forced a smile at the doorway. Blocking it was a small girl—perhaps eight or nine years old—that wasn't Audrey. There was something very familiar with the kid, but he didn't realize who she looked like until Audrey's singsong voice mentioned her name.

"Helena, there's no one…." Audrey came into view, halting when she saw him. "Daddy?!"

He propped himself up with an elbow but Audrey plunged onto the bed to wrestle him in a hug, sending him lying flat on his back again. He choked a laugh and wrapped his arms around her.

"How's my little angel?" he croaked quietly. "You're so…grown up. What's the date today?"

Audrey opened her mouth to answer, but somebody else's voice filled the air.

"Whoa my gosh! That is uncle Kethra?"

"Quatre," Audrey corrected. "Come here, quick. Daddy, here's Helena. She's uncle Heero and aunt Relena's first girl."

"Hi," Quatre greeted. Helena hesitantly tiptoed towards them and squeezed herself to the remaining space on the bed, a lovable coil of flesh that was actually more of a Heero than a Relena. She has her father's hair, messy and chocolate dark, and the way she glared was very reminiscent of the one that Heero used to wear.

"Hello, I'm Helena D. Yuy. Pleasure." It was Relena's voice, adjusted to at least half an octave higher, speaking Heero style. She faced Audrey. "You can touch him, Audee?"

Audrey's eyebrows rose to her hairline. "Huh? Yes, why?"

Helena poked Quatre's arm, then drew her finger back as if his skin was scalding. "Whoa, I can touch him, too! Does that mean the movies are not right?"

"Movies? What movies?"

"The scary ones. They say we can't touch ghosts."

* * *

**September 3, 203. Quatre is 23.**

"So they're right when they say a broken heart can make a carpet out of beer cans."

Quatre froze in mid-movement when a pair of boots waded across the drunken clutter he left on the floor, advancing towards him. He lifted his eyes when the boots clicked to a stop about a yard away from him.

"Hi," a blonde teenage girl, standing akimbo and looking down at him, greeted jauntily. "I'm a harbinger from the future and I bring tidings, both good and bad. What shall I disclose first?"

Quatre's face kinked in bewilderment for a while, then he broke into a dour laugh. "From the future?" He took a clumsy swig from his half-emptied can. "If this is the effect of alcohol on a mind subjected to and cursed by a devil's apparatus, I should've decided to remain a teetotaler."

The girl laughed, too, but more sincerely. "Too late for that. But just in case you're thinking I'm just a hallucination, you're mistaken: I'm real and I've only got a limited time here with you. What shall I tell you first, good news or bad news?"

She plopped herself next to him, curling like a question mark as if for effect, hugging her knees. Quatre eyed her cautiously, and he thought he saw a young Dorothy in her. He scrunched his eyes close and flipped them open quickly, dismissing it as the effect of beer.

"Good or bad?" the girl repeated.

He must have seen her somewhere before; she looked awfully familiar. Dorothy was right when she said his world was filled with too many blonde girls, but if this girl was one of those, she should've stood out. Almost all females in his business and social playpen flashed a primp-and-proper image. This one projected a tomboyish aura, even choosing to wear a black tank top, tight-fitting jeans, and a silver ankh dangling from her neck. He took another gulp of the bitter fluid and shook his head.

"I heard you like fairytales, so perhaps you like happy endings. I got to tell you the bad news first."

She handed him a folded paper. His head was spinning, and after he read the content of the letter, his head spun some more.

"Well," the girl said when he hesitated to fold the paper again, "the bad news is, time flies. The good news is, you're the pilot."

Quatre understood what she said, but he wished he didn't. "When did I write this letter?"

"In the near future, I surmise: the "messenger" there is me. I don't think you have to write it anymore, though, since...well, it's yours now. Do what you want with it. It's like the list of dates you gave ma—Dorothy. Doesn't have a beginning and ending, right? I got that letter when I time-traveled to the day you and Dorothy switched briefcases, back during the war. It's tucked between the pages of her Moleskine notebook; I managed to get it before you went to get your briefcase back."

"I'm confused," he said. "If it's from the future, then why did you get it from my past?"

"Because a version of you from the future time-traveled and left the letter in your past." She shrugged. "Perhaps you're going to do that after I leave, now that the letter's in your hands. I think you want to inform Dorothy or your younger self about what will happen, but that's as bad as the Grandfather Paradox. I can't let you do that."

"Why not?"

"Because that's cheating," she said matter-of-factly. "The same reason why you can't change anything when you journey back to your father's death and all. Time just used me as an instrument."

Quatre fell quiet. The girl kicked an empty can that rolled to her foot.

"I know I'm going to die young," he said softly after a long moment of silence. "I learned that inadvertently from my last travel, from a little girl. I'm not going to live long enough to see my Audrey grow up. But I just didn't realize it'll happen so…soon."

She looked down and kicked another can. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be. I'll never blame a messenger for the news she brings. But tell me…I know you, don't I?"

The girl avoided his stare, and Quatre suddenly figured out who she was.

"Oops," she whispered, glancing at her nonexistent watch. "Tempus has fugited. I need to travel back home."

"Wait…you inherited it? Did you—"

"My mission as Death's assistant is accomplished," she said with an obviously fake yawn, getting up. "I'll answer no questions."

"Please—"

"Got to go now, sir!"

"Wait!" Quatre bolted up from his seat and grabbed the girl's elbow to stop her. "Audrey."

The name was a magic spell of seconds-long immobility. Neither of the two moved for a while until Quatre felt her trembling.

"Audrey?"

"Don't!" she shrieked suddenly, shaking off his hand but not facing him. "Don't say my name! Now you ruined it! I'm supposed to be a nameless messenger but you ruined it! You're not supposed to know this! You're not supposed to know I can…"

"You inherited it, then. My Chrono Displacement's mutated."

Her string of convulsive sobs confirmed his statement. She sank to the floor, among the smelly cans of his breakfast, lunch, and dinner, shaking with muffled cries. Quatre rounded her and tipped her chin so he could see her face. He didn't feel drunk anymore.

"Audrey?" he muttered brokenly. "You're really my Audrey, aren't you?"

She refused to meet his eyes again and Quatre took this as another yes.

"Is your mama okay in your present?" he brushed the tears that seeped from her eyes, unaware that his started flowing as well. "What's she doing when you left? Does she know you're going to meet me? Y-you shouldn't worry her too much, she's already spent a large part of her life worrying and waiting for me when I traveled...When you get back, you tell her I love her, okay? You tell her I don't care whatever she's going to say, and she's going to say a lot, knowing her…but just say I love her, okay? Did she…do you have a stepdad?"

Audrey's response was a mixture of fumbling words and nods and shakes of head. She locked her arms around her father's neck and wept some more, and Quatre felt his heart, his Space Heart, throbbing louder than before.

"I'm sorry if I can't see you grow up," he murmured almost soundlessly. "I'm sorry if I can't be so much of a father to you…"

"Mama's right." Audrey was trying to sound happy, but her tone came out very unpleasant because she was weeping. "You have a penchant for apologizing for every little thing even if it's not your fault, you _idiot_."

Quatre let out a short gulp of laugh and hugged her tighter.

"You'll meet mama," she said sotto voce. "You have to because she's going to wait—I met her when she's eighty and you still haven't showed up."

The shards of his heart shattered into smaller pieces. "Eighty?" _She's waiting for me all her life?_

"I know you can't control your travels, dad, but you have to try. Please. Mama…she still wants to know why you never told her you're good at drawing."

"Dorothy…"

"She loved you, dad. She still does, and that's the truest thing that ever happened in her life. She's just overwhelmed by her knowledge about ZERO's effect on her, but her love's never been a lie."

"I know," he whispered to her ear. "I know."

In the next few moments, they wordlessly shared their secret sorrows in their tears, in their tight embrace. Quatre wept because he was not fortunate enough to see the years that passed since that day, when little Audrey was soundly slumbering on her crib, to that same day, when Audrey was as old as Dorothy when their timelines converged for the second time. It was funny, thinking that he could see the product of more than a decade in just a single day.

He got a lot of time in his hands but he let them all fly. He wept because he knew time flies, and he knew he was the pilot yet he did nothing. He wept because he was not strong enough to fight for his feelings towards Dorothy. It was too late now.

"I think I'm going to travel," he said, feeling a different nausea from the one brought on by the alcohol.

"Me too," Audrey muttered. "See mom for me, dad."

And they were both gone.

* * *

**November 10, 195. Quatre is 23.**

He was back in that music room. No one else was present, and he knew what to do.

The briefcase—Dorothy's—was on the floor. He picked it up and unlatched it, and a thousand memories sluiced back to his head. He smiled at them as he slipped the letter into the mauve Moleskine notebook.

Audrey was wrong about him cheating. He put the letter there not because he wanted to apprise his younger self or a younger Dorothy about his untimely death. It was because he wanted Audrey to get the letter so he would be able to inform himself from a few minutes ago—that was also eight years forward from this date—that time, not experience, was the cruelest teacher. It gives the test first before it teaches the lessons.

"Time just used me as an instrument," he recalled Audrey saying. Wrong again. It was him who used her so he would do a right thing for one last time. It was a cursed, unending loop.

He ran his fingers over the keyboards and played the 'Sunshine Sonnet'. He was in the middle of the piece when colors burst across his vision again. He bade AC 195 farewell, for he knew it would be the last time he would be visiting it.

* * *

**September 16 260, Quatre is 23, Dorothy is 80.**

"_You'll meet mama. You have to because she's going to wait—I met her when she's eighty and you still haven't showed up."_

He saw her standing on the widow's walk when he opened his eyes. A madonna against the bleak background of a colony night sky, she held Pietro, his violin, the careful and loving way she would hold an infant. She was looking far beyond the railings and into the sea of city lights below, waiting for him.

"Dorothy."

"What took you?" she asked with a sad smile. He tried to ball his hands into fists, but he became too weak all of a sudden to do that. He used the railings as a crutch as he walked towards her, and she took her own little steps to meet him. They stopped a hairsbreadth away from each other, drinking in each other's appearance.

He reached out to her and touched the delicate lines of her face, her crow's feet, the snow-white hair that fell on her brow, her eyelids.

"You just proved to me how powerless time is against your beauty," he said in a sincere undertone, pressing a kiss on her hand. "Did you miss me?"

"I waited fifty seven years for this day and you're going to ask me that?"

Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed midnight.

"Oh, let me rephrase," she chuckled feebly. "I waited _fifty eight_ years for this day."

"So today's…"

"I'm glad you managed to get home before midnight. I'm finally eighty one."

He folded his arms around her, the new fact adding to his heavy load. "Happy birthday…"

"This is the greatest gift I've ever received, Quatre. Thank you."

In so many occasions he heard it's wrong for boys—men—to cry, but most of the time he felt otherwise. So feeling it was right, he let his tears run down his face again, burying his head on the crook of her neck.

"You smell of beer," Dorothy observed.

"You made me drink," Quatre sniffed with a mocking tone of blaming. "Audrey saw me three sheets to the wind and snapped me completely back into soberness. I always know she's going to be so beautiful like you."

"She traveled to your time?"

"Yes. She told me you still want to know why I never told you anything about my drawings."

Laughing, Dorothy tore away from his hold and looked him straight in the eye. "Tell me why."

"Simple." Quatre broke the eye contact when he stared down at Pietro. "It's because I don't feel the need to draw anymore. Drawings for me are visual representations of my dreams. I draw something I want to understand, something I want to be true, and when they do come true, I'll erase or throw the drawing away. When I met you, there's nothing left to wish for or dream about; you're my everything. Meeting you is my fairytale and no matter what will happen, I know I'm going to have my happy ending."

He looked up just in time to see her pearly tears rolling down. He cupped her face and kissed them away.

"Let me play," he said quietly, taking Pietro from her arms. He played a lively happy birthday and let it fade out into their self-composed theme song, the 'Sunshine Sonnet'.

"I love you Dorothy, and it isn't because of a lie. I love you because it's the only real thing that could ever happen in my dream-like existence. Keep that in mind…"

Dorothy walked forward to enclose him in an embrace, but by the time she reached his position, he wasn't there anymore. Time stole him away from her again and she was left alone crying, crushing the violin to her chest.

* * *

**January 25, 187. Quatre is 23, and 15, Dorothy is 7.**

He had trekked back into the past, and he thought he knew when. It was the day little Dorothy beat a fifteen-year-old him at chess.

"So this is it," he told himself peacefully. He fingered the plastic ring on his pinkie, the toy a little Dorothy gave him when she proposed. He kissed it and marched under the lights of the Catalonian mansion, searching for Dorothy's room. He was positive he looked like a big stupid fleabag, with his hair bedraggled like a mop and the beer's perfume cloaking him, but Dorothy wouldn't mind. She wouldn't mind anything at all just to see Mr. Prince.

He knew he has to give the ring to her now whether he liked it or not; he would accomplish this because it was in Dorothy's possession in the future. His Space Heart was roaring madly inside him, but he couldn't care less.

He stopped outside a door when the throbbing accelerated, then pressed his right ear against it.

"Oz is not a place where I am lost," he heard Dorothy say from inside the room. "It is my home and I'm safe there, that's why Papa talks good things about it. There are a few Wicked Witches there though. They keep on clinging to Papa like leeches because Mama is with Mama Mary and the angels now."

A pause, and he heard his young voice: "I'm sorry to hear about your mother."

"Don't be. I'm sure Mama is happy playing with God's cloud attendants."

Quatre's hand fell mechanically on the knob but a millisecond before he could twist it, he heard a gunshot. It was way too close that it might have broken his eardrum. He reached to cradle the shell of his ear, but the moment he peeled off his hand from the door, he lost his balance and collapsed to the floor. Pain broke out to every part of his body, its epicenter at his chest. He winced when he touched it. There was blood.

"Trespasser! Trespasser!"

The screamed declaration was followed by more gunshots. It all happened too fast that he didn't feel anything, but he was aware that bullets were being punched into his body, producing more pain epicenters. Trembling, he reached to remove the ring on his finger and hurled it away from him, bouncing against a corner where Dorothy might find. She would find it, of course.

For the first time since he began traveling, he felt grateful when the vertiginous sensations of time's call oozed around his brain. His Space Heart whispered something to him, revelations, realizations, visions. The colors were calmer now when they invaded his eyes, and he smiled, sensing that whenever he was going now, there was going to be peace.

"Dorothy…."

* * *

**September 3, 203. Quatre is 23, Dorothy is 24.**

She dropped the book she was reading when he appeared in front of her, blood-drenched and disheveled, falling forward. A rush of adrenaline shot her up from the bed and she caught him in an embrace. They crashed to the carpeted floor in a bloody, ungraceful heap, Quatre draped over her.

"Quatre!" she shrieked hysterically, her immaculate white nightgown quickly darkening into a horrible incarnadine. "Quatre, what…when did you…Rashid, Ahmed! Call an ambulance! Help us! Q-Quatre, I'm…no, no, no don't close your eyes, I'm here, Dorothy's here, look, look at me…"

She patted his face and forced him to focus on her, to keep holding onto her. He smiled up at her and coughed when he tried pronouncing her name.

"Don't speak please," she sobbed, brushing his hair away from his face. "Don't speak now…help will be coming soon. You'll be okay, you'll be okay…"

He seemed ridiculously calm. He caught a fistful of her hair in a loose clasp and tugged at it, weakly pulling her down, down so he could softly claim her lips with his own in an abrupt contact.

"Quatre," Dorothy's voice broke. It was an I'll-love-you-even-in-death kiss. "I never laughed at any of your jokes so don't make one right now, I'm warning you! It's not funny! Die on me and _I'll kill you!_ Quatre—"

He laughed. "Y-you'll kill me?"

Dorothy swatted his shoulder lightly. "I said don't speak! Rashid! Where's the ambulance?! Try calling Iria!"

"U-useless."

"Shut up! Speak again and you'll feel sorry marrying me, you hear?"

"I-I'll never regret…"

"I said shut up!"

"D-Dorothy, I told you, it's g-going to be useless. I'll die tonight and—"

"That's a lie! You're not going to die and certainly not in my arms! You hear that?! _No one's going to die tonight!_"

"S-sorry," he gasped with a poor attempt at winking, obviously knowing what she wanted to do. "I think ZERO's on my c-camp. My Space Heart says whatever ability that m-machine gave you, it doesn't have clout on me. Apparently, my feelings for you are t-too rigid for it to perforate my system…"

"You're hallucinating," she cried. "Don't speak until Iria arrives. Please hold on…"

"I-I'm going to prove you wrong when you said I loved y-you because of a lie."

"I'll never forgive you if you die on me! Never!"

"Y-you didn't remind me…y-you spoke nothing of the sort when I met you in the f-future."

"Quatre, please…."

He once again gently grasped her hair and she lowered her head, biting her lower lip. "I l-love you, Dorothy," he muttered, a pair of glittering globules of tears dribbling down his temples. "I've never said and felt anything truer than this."

"You won't leave me if you really love me!"

"I'll n-never leave you for a second if I can help it, but I have no choice." He flashed a tired, sleepy smile. "Your voice r-relaxes me…Sing for me, please?"

"No," she sobbed mulishly.

"Dorothy…"

"I said no!"

And like every scene akin to this, it was him who sang for her. He lightly touched her cheek as he hummed the notes of their love song, quickly wiping away red smears he left there with his thumb. She firmly cocooned him in her arms as if the gesture could lend him some of her strength, when in truth she was just too hesitant to let him go. He was slipping away, breath by breath, tear by tear, heartbeat by heartbeat, so, so slowly, like the sands of time seeping through the narrow center of an hourglass…

He finished the song. He lied there motionlessly, a hint of contentment on his face, as if he was just asleep and having a pleasant dream.

* * *

**September 16 260. Quatre is 23, Dorothy is 80.**

_Dearest Dorothy,_

_When you receive this, newspapers with my obituary are perhaps already a part of history books (I say "perhaps" because you know, it's seems absurd and self-important to declare one's own death as an out-and-out fact. And "things" can happen). I know it's not the nicest thing to start a letter with and I want to tell you so many things, but I'm running against time. Like I always do._

_I hope this death of mine didn't create so much of a fuss to you, and if it did, I'm really sorry. As of now I don't know how I will die, but I'm sure I'm going to discover it soon because a messenger from the future just came to indirectly notify me that I don't have enough time left to do what I want._

_Dorothy, I want to tell you again that I love you. You can stop time from flowing when you kiss me, you can turn everything to illusions and you're the only thing that's real when you say you love me. You made this bizarre life of mine worth living, and I lived it for you. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you. I guess I'm ready now._

_I hope that you made the right decision after my demise—that you decided to continue to love, to be free. Of me. I hope you stopped waiting (you've been doing it all your life) and you went on embracing and celebrating life, which is beautiful._

_While it's true that this abnormal displacement will bring me my death, I just want to say I never regretted having this disorder. I met you because of this, I met a grown-up Audrey even if I'm not around to see her grow into a woman like you. I love you both so much and I thank ZERO for making our paths converge. _

_I never really left you, Dorothy. I'll be beside you, loving you always._

_Quatre._

"He came from the day you beat him at chess before he returned to you the night he died."

Dorothy lowered the paper and eyed a sixteen-year-old Audrey levelly. "So the gunshots that day…"

Audrey nodded in answer, toying with her ankh pendant. "I'm going to meet him next, going to show him that letter. And he's going to be here."

Dorothy wrinkled her brow. "Honey, Quatre can't control his travels like you. He cannot choose when to go."

"He'll be here," Audrey churlishly responded. "I promise that."

Dorothy handed the letter back to her daughter, and in a blink, Audrey was gone. She held Pietro in her arms and closed her eyes, thinking about how everything was connected to each other, a chain of events broken and repaired and broken again by time.

She waited exactly the same way she waited for him before, except now she held a promise left by her daughter, something she could hold on to with assurance. She feared that Audrey's miraculous setup would misfire, but time taught her to never believe her doubts and to never doubt her beliefs. Sooner or later, it would all pay off.

"Dorothy."

She turned, and a feeling of renascence washed over her when she laid her eyes on him. "What took you?"

* * *

Fin.

__

The broken clock is a comfort; it helps me sleep tonight

Maybe it can stop tomorrow from stealing all my time

And I am here still waiting, though I still have my doubts

I am damaged at best like you've already figured out.

I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing

With a broken heart that's still beating

In the pain, there is healing;

In your name, I find meaning

So I'm holding on, I'm holding on,

I'm barely holding on to you.

The broken locks were a warning you got inside my head;

I tried my best to be guarded, I'm an open book instead.

And I still see your reflection inside my eyes

They are looking for purpose, still looking for life.

I'm hanging on another day

Just to see what you will throw my way;

And I'm hanging on to the words you say,

You said that I will…I'll be okay.

The broken lights from the freeway left me here alone;

I may have lost my way now, haven't forgotten my way home.

-**Broken **by Lifehouse, _The Time Traveler's Wife_ OST

* * *

**Some trivia:**

1. Audrey's appearance when she meets up with Quatre—black tank top, silver ankh, tight-fitting jeans—is based on the character design of Death from the graphic novel series _The Sandman_ by Neil Gaiman. She's sort of played the role of a death harbinger here so I thought Death's outfit will suit her (and I _love_ Neil Gaiman so much so anyone can consider it a shout out).

2. The rainbow colors that Quatre always see when he time-travels is inspired by Delirium, a rather colorful and interesting character, again from _The Sandman_. I thought of Delirium because of Quatre's frenzied reaction when he first used the Wing Zero.

3. Pietro, the name of Quatre's violin, came from the Italian composer Pietro Mascagni. His most important work is the opera _Cavalleria rusticana_. The opera exemplifies the Italian operatic style called _verismo_ (Italian for "realism"), which stresses the violent behavior of people under great emotional strain (can anyone say that I love the Wing-Zero-crazy-Quatre scene very much?).

4. Helena, the name I gave Heero and Relena's daughter (which came from the combination of their names) is also inspired by the song_ Helena_ by My Chemical Romance. Its hair-raising music video sends me always connecting the name with ghosts and the dead (see for yourself), thus the role I gave her at the first part of the last chapter.

5. Audrey, the name of Quatre's daughter, is of course from Audrey Niffenegger, author of this story's muse. Audrey is the equivalent of Alba, Henry's daughter, who inherits his Chrono Displacement.

6. Turning lies into truths is the superpower of Allyson Hargreeves, aka The Rumor, a character from the graphic novel _The Umbrella Academy_ by My Chemical Romance vocalist Gerard Way.

__

Thank you very much to those who stick with me, I really, really enjoyed writing this! I don't know if this last chapter became too angsty or overdramatic (I've been watching a lot of tear-jerking soap operas lately, plus heartbreaking real-life stories of people affected by the wrath of the typhoon _Ondoy_). I don't know too, if I've been too involved with this fic because I sort of cried when I killed Quatre, LOL. Seriously. Tell me what you think!

The "trivial thing" I'm talking about in chapter 5 is of course the plastic ring. Do go back to chapter 3 and the toy ring is there, at the part where Dorothy meets with little Milliardo (some of you may have passed it as, well, something trivial). The briefcase switcheroo (and Dorothy's mauve Moleskine notebook) and Pietro from chapter 1, and the drawings from chapter 2 are of course not out of place, unlike what my critiques here at home are always telling me. :P

Thanks, everyone! It's been fun!


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